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Randy Wentzel, Customer Service Director
SWW: How did you start working for Sonoma Wire Works? |
When he first told me about his plans to create "Pickup" (He hadn't come up with the name RiffWorks yet), I knew I'd want to get involved. It wasn't until RiffWorks Standard was being developed that a job with Sonoma Wire Works opened up. When Doug offered me the job, it didn't take much convincing on his part to get me to leave my other career of eight years and hop on board with this amazing group of people. I'm a lucky guy!
SWW: When did you first start playing music?
Randy: We had a piano at home growing up and I spent a lot of time making up simple little melodies. I took lessons when I was really young, and was put off by having to do scales right from the first session. All I wanted to do was make melodies, so I found scales terribly boring. I had two or three lessons before quitting.
Dan (left) and Randy (right) in a Sonoma County newspaper review from 2006.
This past year I took a few months of bass lessons from an amazing bassist named Steve Hoffman. That's the only formal training I've had - for the most part I play by ear. I'd like to take more lessons.
SWW: So you play the bass. What other instruments to you use?
Randy: I feel like a fraud saying that I know how to play any instrument. Someone hands me a bass or guitar to play and I freeze and get that deer in the headlights look in my eyes. Oddly enough though, if I lock myself up in my makeshift office/studio, I can crank out songs pretty easily. It's all done by trial and error and I often have to record the same part many times before I'm happy with it. That's the beauty of RiffWorks - it makes the process painless for goof-offs like me. I'd better be careful, or I'll make this sound like an infomercial.
But yeah, I use a Fender Jazz bass, whatever random guitar I have lying around, and a M-Audio Axiom 25 channeled through Reason or a Moog soft synthesizer. Work provides me with a bunch of ASIO audio interfaces for testing purposes, though I tend to stick with the trusty PreSonus Firebox for the bulk of what I do. I think most of its lure comes from the fact that it's aluminum; it weighs a ton for its size and has real knobs. It's sexy.
SWW: What did you use to record your songs with before using RiffWorks?
Randy: Back in high school I had a friend that would come over with an old Tascam 4-track recorder. It used off the shelf tape cassettes that would spin at double speed. It was really easy to use and it's amazing how fun much a person can have with two or three power chords. It wasn't until 2000 that I started recording music through my computer. I bought a copy of N-Track recorder and used one of those sticky-backed Internet chat microphones and used it to mic my old Zenith guitar amp. My first songs consisted of a few simple guitar bits with distorted string synth tones that I generated from a battery powered Casio keyboard. After a few songs I started playing around with singing over my music. I still have those first songs on my hard drive, and I laugh a little when they come up in my Mp3 music stream.
I think I used an early version of Sonic Foundry's Acid well before Sony took it over. It was around that time that Doug started having me alpha test RiffWorks 1 and I haven't looked back at those other apps since.
SWW: It's hard to place your songs into any particular genre. Why is that?
Randy: I think it's pretty easy to pull apart my songs and say, "Well this bit sounds like that guy, and that bit sounds like that other band, etc." I think I strive for originality and could care less about popularity. That approach probably results in a lot of songs that are not very palatable for most listeners. An example of that would be the song I made a few weeks ago using one note that I pitch bent slowly, in an almost imperceptible manner, up and down over the course of ten minutes. I'm an effects junkie, so that one note was processed through a number of delays and other effects. I think it's a fun avant garde piece reminiscent of parts of the "2001 Space Odyssey" soundtrack, but most people write it off as rubbish. People often say my music would make good soundtrack pieces. I find that flattering, because that means there's a lot of mood behind what I make.
The one-note song is a pretty extreme example though. Most of what I make can probably be fit into some offshoot of "psychedelic synth rock with a strong dash of dark wave." Not exactly a chart topping mix of genres.
SWW: What are some of your biggest influences?
Randy: Pink Floyd's "Atom Heart Mother," "Meddle," and "A Saucer Full of Secrets" albums are huge. Other bands would be the Legendary Pink Dots, Kraftwerk, early and late Gary Numan (he's still making great music), Johnny Cash, Killing Joke, Radiohead, Brian Wilson, The Meters, Skinny Puppy, Donovan, The Magnetic Fields, and They Might Be Giants. My girlfriend, family, friends, politics, and/or mood set the tone for the song I'm working on.
Thank you for the opportunity to share a little about myself!
Listen to Randy's music in his RiffCaster music stream here: Recent Songs and Older Work.
Randy's Myspace Page is here.
Check out Randy's photography here. There are some fun work pics in there.
Randy's email is randy at sonomawireworks.com
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